Use our Accessibility Toolbar to customise your experience on The LEVEL Centre Website
The Spotlight Award 2025
Each year the Spotlight Award supports a disabled artist to develop their creative practice and learn more about the process of exhibiting their work. The award culminates in a solo exhibition at LEVEL Centre that gives a behind the scenes look at the artists’ methodology and celebrates their creative practice.
The Spotlight Award winner for 2025 is Christine Thomas who will be exhibiting work at Level from 23 January 2025.
Christine Thomas
Christine is an artist and researcher based in Derbyshire. Her creative endeavours primarily revolve around textile artwork, which is deeply influenced by women’s lived experiences and often approached through a feminist lens. The pieces showcased at The Level Centre were a culmination of her recent residency, during which she collaborated with Backlit Studios, Quad, and the Institute of Mental Health.
Having relocated to Derbyshire from North Wales in 1990, Christine has immersed herself in her career as an artist, tutor and community artist working for many well-known organisations across the county. She has balanced her roles as an artist and a community artist while nurturing her family through the chaos of growing up.
After earning a Master’s in Fine Art, she is currently pursuing a practice-based research PhD at the University of Derby. Her doctoral research is focused on a critical exploration of domestic abuse within rural environments, shedding light on often-overlooked issues that affect women in these communities.
In her professional capacity, Christine is the Engagement Manager for a national portfolio organisation, Animate Projects, who work at the intersection of film, art and animation producing projects across multiple platforms.
Christine says:
“As a late-diagnosed Audhd woman, I am delighted to have been awarded the Spotlight Exhibition at Level Centre in Rowsley. I aim to create work that explores my lived experience of being neurodivergent, and highlights the difference in the presentation of autism and ADHD that high-masking autistic women portray.”